There is little in life that is more precious than to see the one you love enthralled with delight at something simple; for therein one touches the self of one’s soul, the memories of the child grown, and with joy one heals many things that are not so.
With just enough wind to raise the kite, and not so much that one had no challenge to pay attention, provide tension, and bring success through intention against the wind, to give the kite cause to rise against the sky.
There the sun burst through the clouds of the day above the city skyline, giving witness to human effort to create a city and God’s good effort to create beauty at every turn, even amidst the chaos of human effort to falsify the past in order to ruin another.
In God’s world there are of necessity always things of our past that we must haul along with us, and we can complain that they are there, or realize that God leaves them attached so as to stabilize us in the present, to keep our heads up, our hearts beating, and our spirits oriented towards grace. The tails of life are not anchors of disaster, but lessons that can be the source of our wisdom.
There with light pouring through us we can truly be alive.
Or we can deny the past, pervert its memories, and shut out the light, and live a shell of God’s intention for us; we can live in darkness, fear and anxiety.
There is nothing so destructive for ourselves but to think everyone else is to blame for our failings; for then we never learn, we never grow, we never love, and we never truly live.
It is in knowing our own failings and our past, and receiving forgiveness for it all, that we learn to shine, and fly, and stay connected to those we love and those who love us.
As wise Phoebe said: once you lie, though it may seem so small, it leads you places you could not predict, places dark and destructive from which you cannot escape. Okay she didn’t quite say it that way, but she saw that truth: lies seep in quietly and suddenly grow to consume our lives. And we cannot get free of them.
Except, when the light of Christ enters our real though denied guilt, and then we see by grace the goodness we had forgotten and denied, the goodness all around us, and in people we once denigrated and rejected … and the profound goodness that God imputes to us though undeserving. And then we can live free of fear, for we are forgiven and valued and worthy … and able to stand as equals.
Equal in failures; and equally redeemed and made whole. Sinners made simultaneously Saints.
And the fun of it all, and I mean of it all, not just this evening in the park, or this week of lies and hell and hope, rather the fun of it all is like this evening;
It is the enemy’s ace, the Red Baron, which is portrayed, and which delivers the delight, and which, though in previous generations an instrument of death, is an instrument of joy.
Against the backdrop of light and darkness, or cloud and trees this red triwingeddevil thrills us.
And that childlike thrill reaches deep in the soul to heal and bring hope.
God is Good; and all will be well. We shall see the devil of the past, turn into the deliverer of joy, of life, of love, in the present and into the future.
If only the children (the child in us all) could see … the truth and be free.